Great refusal

Dante

Later elaborations

• Northrop Frye considered that “the ‘gran refuito’, the voluntary surrender of one’s appointed function, is a frequent source of tragedy in Shakespeare,” as for example with Lear’s Division of the Kingdoms.
• Alfred North Whitehead used the phrase great refusal for the determination not to succumb to the facticity of things as they are—to favour instead the imagination of the ideal.
• Herbert Marcuse took up Whitehead’s concept to call for a refusal of the consumer society in the name of the liberating powers of art.
• Jacques Le Goff considered that “the ‘hippie’ movement is indicative of the permanent character—re-emerging at precise historical conjunctures—of the adepts of the gran rifiuto.